Sunday, April 17, 2016

Rare Objects

Rare Objects by Kathleen Tessaro

Everyone in this story has something to hide.We meet Maeve Fanning while in
a psychiatric hospital because she is wild and miserable and loves her bootleg
gin a bit too much and had an abortion.That’s a lot to hide if you are Irish in 1930’s Boston.She meets there a young woman who is a mysteriously miserable young
lady.

Maeve is released from the hospital and goes home to her
mother in the Italian neighborhood of Boston and is determined to remake
herself with a job and opportunities that will get her out of said
neighborhood.Despite being in the middle of the Great Depression, she uses her wily personality to change her appearance and finds a job at an
elite antique establishment that caters to the very moneyedof Boston and New York museums.After delivering a purchase to the Van der
Laarfamily, she recognizes their
daughterDiana as the young troubled
woman she met in the hospital.And this
is where Maeve’s real remaking begins.

Diana is determined to bring Maeve into her life, though she
can’t wait to escape it.Maeve is star
struck by the money and privilege Diana enjoys, but trying to live a double life
is exhausting and rarely handled sober.When she is at work and home and in her neighborhood she is one
person.When she is with Diana’s family
she is another, and when she is with them she might as well be on the moon.

As I said, everyone has something to hide and eventually it
all comes to play, some with better results than others.

I was mistaken about what I thought might be a story that
for me was overly light.Like the
characters, the story hid it’s message well, but that made the hunt more
enjoyable.